


Our Favorite Adventure

by tiffany rawlins (wearemany), wearemany



Series: The Long Run [9]
Category: NSYNC, Popslash
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-06-25
Updated: 2002-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:08:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/tiffany%20rawlins, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/wearemany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The Long Run. Future fic for the future fic.</p><p>Gay weddings are just as boring as straight weddings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Favorite Adventure

Gay weddings are just as boring as straight weddings, usually, but Chris is a mover and shaker now and so they have to go. They make their way to the second groom's side of the church and he slaps a lot of shoulders along the way. Lance sits very very still during the vows, so still that Chris is kind of afraid that if he looks over Lance will be crying.

It's late afternoon by the time they get home, and Graciela's off for the weekend. Chris sits on the chest at the foot of the bed. He unlaces his nice shoes and pulls his tie over his head. Light fades over the amber lake and Lance rolls up his cuffs, unbuckling the band of a heavy silver-linked watch and laying it face up on the dresser. He's telling a story about the other groom's sister trying to slip him a demo tape during the first best man's speech, but Chris isn't listening at all. He's just watching the little things.

Lance moves through the house, through Chris' life, with a sure step and a sense of ownership, laying his watch on the dresser, telling Diane that of course they'll take her grandmother's quilt for the bedroom. He remembers to buy gifts on their behalf for all the boring weddings and christenings they go to so that Chris can have something to do during the day while Lance helps kids make music.

"C'mere," Chris says, reaching out his hand, and Lance turns towards him, takes four steps. Chris twists Lance's arm palm-up and kisses the light hair bent and matted by the watchband. Chris knows Lance's place in his life.

 

They go downstairs to watch the news and get a drink, and Maxim chases a speck of dust, knocking cranberry juice all over Chris' white dress shirt. Chris swears and unbuttons it. The red is bleeding all over his undershirt, too, and he strips them both off and turns on cold water. Lance intercepts him as he's about to upend dish soap onto the fabric.

"There's, there's something you're supposed to use for juice," Lance says, softly, his mouth near Chris' ear. "Soda? Seltzer?"

"We have seltzer," Chris says. Lance's hands cuff Chris' forearms and the water just runs.

"I don't think it's seltzer." Five years here together and Chris is not a young man anymore, he is not eighteen or even twice that and still the feel of Lance's lips on the back of his neck makes his throat feel swollen and raw and hungry, like he's sung himself hoarse. He turns in Lance's arms, dropping the shirt in the sink.

Lance leans out of the laundry room door with the phone in one hand and says, "Mom says it's diluted ammonia and then vinegar." He's shirtless now, too, , standing barefoot in the V of the open washer door in just his rumpled khakis. There are soft horizontal lines on his forehead that Chris wants to run his thumb through but doesn't.

Lance will be forty in nine months. Lance is beautiful and Chris' head is full of the little things as he walks back to the kitchen and digs under the sink. "We don't have any ammonia," he shouts over his shoulder. "There's, we have carpet stuff that might have ammonia in it."

"It's a nice shirt," Lance says. Chris stands up and his knees make this weird, new creaking noise. He's not eighteen and he should probably stop fucking on the kitchen floor if he wants to be able to walk upright at sixty.

"Do you want to get married?" Chris asks. Lance is still holding the stained fabric and Chris says, "I have another shirt just like that, I think."

"You have two," Lance says. "One is gray, though." He blinks.

Chris says, "Is this, am I supposed to say that again more seriously or tell you it was just a joke?"

Lance laughs, then, and leans in to kiss Chris. "I love you," he says, chuckling. "You may or may not have just proposed, and even you are not sure which, or what you want me to say."

Chris puts his hand over Lance's heart. "I'd make an honest man out of you in a minute. You wanna call a preacher?"

"You're suddenly worried we're living in sin here?" Lance's eyes are bookended with amused concern.

"No," Chris says, looking down.

"Worried I'll have a midlife crisis and trade you in for some twenty-year-old who can get it up twelve times a day?"

"No," Chris says. He's not. They had their midlife crises early.

"Well, it can't be for the kitchen appliances," Lance says mildly. "We really, if we get married we shouldn't let people buy us stupid presents. Or any presents, actually. Unless they want to buy us a twenty-year-old houseboy who can get it up twelve times a day. We could share him."

Chris looks up. "Alternate Wednesdays?"

"Sure, honey," Lance says. "You can even name him. If you promise not to name him something stupid."

"I can name him but you get veto power?"

"Exactly. Are we cooking dinner or going out?"

 

Three a.m. and Chris feels every minute of his forty-seven years magnified by adolescent worry. Lance always lets him change the subject, or does it for him when he can tell Chris wants to stop talking about the things that matter. This matters.

"Lance," he says, poking him in the ribs. Lance doesn't wake up. Lance sleeps like a dead bear in December and Chris jabs him twice more before settling his head on Lance's chest and going back to sleep.

Chris wakes up second and Lance is lying with one cheek on the pillow, staring at him, blowing air onto Chris' face like he's trying to torment one of JC's cats into playing. Chris squints and Lance kisses him.

Chris swallows. He doesn't want to squeak. He doesn't want his voice to crack. He wants this to be the first thing he says and to get it right the first time. The second time, anyway.

Lance grins lazily. Chris touches Lance's face and says, "Marry me."

Lance says yes and Chris says "oh shit" and then "fuck, I love you," and then he kisses Lance and they go back to sleep for a while.

 

When they wake up again it's all kind of bright and fuzzy, the day and the night before. It's not the kind of thing either of them is bound to let the other forget, though, and so Chris sucks Lance's ring finger into his mouth and bites along the knuckle until Lance says, "Okay, Jesus, there's this jeweler on Halsted that has nice stuff, we could go today if you really want."

Chris sits up, bouncing a little. "What if I want one of those huge ugly things with emeralds and rubies and it's so heavy you can barely lift your hand?"

"Then I'm calling the whole thing off," Lance says, pushing back the covers. "I mean it."

Chris follows Lance into the bathroom, leans into the shower to run the water almost-hot. "So taking you to some chi-chi place for dinner and getting down on my knees and asking you again is out of the question?"

Chris is helping Lance take t-shirt off, but he stops and pins it over his face instead, muffling Lance's laugh. When he wrestles free, Lance kisses him and says, "You're really not gonna let me forget that you asked me first, are you?"

Chris shrugs and steps into the shower. "You've had plenty of time. Years and years."

"Years and years," Lance repeats solemnly, pulling the glass door shut behind them.

"It's a good thing I finally said something. We would've been in the old pop stars' home before you'd gotten your shit together."

"You're just lookin' out for our future," Lance says, shifting them around so Chris' back is blocking most of the spray. "One eye on the clock, always counting down."

"Counting forward," Chris says, bringing Lance's hand to his mouth. It looks really bare.

"Years and years," Lance says again, and kisses the water running down Chris' neck.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title by K's Choice. I'm a fucking sap, it turns out. There's no other excuse.


End file.
